


GOLD BURNS THROUGH US

by foundation



Series: There Is a Flag, There Is No Wind [4]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Implied Sexual Content, Just a lot of unhealthiness going around, M/M, Narrative Poetry (sorry), Non-Linear Narrative, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-07-12 14:41:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7109626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundation/pseuds/foundation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A ROMANCE</p><p> </p><p>(or: how dorian pavus learned to hide.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	GOLD BURNS THROUGH US

**Author's Note:**

> explanations for tags in end notes.

i. 

The street lamps of Minrathous burn —  
so does Alia.  
Dorian watches him as he dances,  
through moon and torch light. 

“Not even the heavens can touch us Dorian!”  
Alia screams, he laughs.  
He reaches his hands out wide,  
the gold of his body and eyes bright. 

“If I die I will swallow the world with me! —  
my name will ring from every corner of Thedas!”  
Alia’s eyes are aflame.  
Gold drips from his very skin.

Dorian believes him.  
All drunken promises and boasts.  
Dorian feels truth ring through his bones,  
and he knows — 

Alia will alight them all aflame to be remembered.  
and Dorian knows,  
that he will die  
in the same breath as Alia. 

ii. 

Dorian stumbles through summer heat.  
The fog of confusion and wine thick.  
Dorian, alone and lost.  
All too common. 

Alia, draped across his balcony.  
Strapped in dark leather,  
wrapped in light silk.  
His gaze heavy on Dorian below. 

He calls down,  
his voice as sweet as a sirens.  
From Alia comes an invitation, temptation,  
one Dorian is only too happy to fall into. 

Red dusk washes over them,  
Alia haloed by the dying light.  
Dorian stares up at him, with a reverence  
most reserve for Andraste. 

Alia holds a jar of dark honey,  
close to his chest.  
He scoops it out with his fingers,  
letting his lips trail slow over them, a smile left behind. 

The blush rises on Dorian’s cheeks.  
He cannot tell if Alia’s smirking or smiling —  
the two blend together.  
A first kiss traded as they trade names. 

Dorian hovers in the doorway,  
Alia making him promise a return,  
a promise — a hook — a trap —  
Dorian doesn’t know.

iii. 

Dorian returns,  
he comes back, again,  
and again and again,  
and again. 

He goes until he map Alia’s skin  
with his eyes closed.  
Until the taste of honey stays.  
He remains until it’s love. 

Dorian exists in his father’s shadow,  
he lives in Alia’s light.  
The two walk through torch lit alleys,  
they lay in Alia’s bed. 

Alia — they first he calls lover.  
Alia, who runs burning hands down his chest.  
The gasps — the moans they trade,  
their private language, a secret, sparkling and new. 

Alia presses kisses, onto every  
inch of his skin.  
Until he is  
burning, reshaped. 

The Chantry says,  
they are created in the Maker’s image.  
Dorian is remade —  
in Alia’s.

iv. 

Alia takes him to a dance.  
A mask, fixed over both their faces.  
Alia twirls and flirts and dances between Magisters.  
Dorian stands, dark and away, fury trying to find it’s place.

Jealousy tastes bitter,  
Dorian discovers.  
It coats his throat, his mouth,  
his heart heavier then he has ever felt.

Cool wind cuts,  
as he storms from the hall.  
Dorian feels a knife, driven into his skin.  
One he cannot pull out. 

He sits outside of Alia’s apartment.  
To late to return to the Circle  
— it’s gilded walls, it’s sharp eyes.  
and he waits, waits, and waits.

Alia returns, as a lilac, lavender sky  
finds it’s way above.  
Dorian slumped over, asleep.  
Alia sighs and sinks, rousing Dorian from his sleep. 

Alia makes a meal,  
of honey milk.  
He places it in front of Dorian and tells him,  
how he came to the streets of Minrathous.  
Of how a family fell apart.  
Without barely laying eyes  
on one another.  
Of how Alia ran, from a legacy and to one. 

How he ran to golden streets,  
where golden words,  
whispered in the right ears,  
grants him secrets — grants him power. 

v.

Dorian begins to see him different —  
How Alia can live here.  
In his dark leathers, in his draping silks.  
His dripping golden honey.

Secrets flow around Alia,  
who controls men with a smile.  
The mightiest Magisters, risen and exalted,  
fallen to their knees in his wake. 

Dorian has become a member of a pulpit,  
of a gilded God.  
Who he sees laying in cotton sheets,  
a pray of his own on his lips.

As he sleeps,  
Dorian trails patterns along his lips.  
Dorian lays close to his skin, so close he can almost see —  
the gold burning through Alia’s very skin.

vi. 

Gods fall.  
It’s what Gods do.  
Dorian sees Alia fall,  
as winter settles on the city.

Alia, withdrawn, locks the door,  
to Dorian’s call.  
Huddled in for warmth,  
the Magisters retreated to their summer homes.

Who is a God without his subjects,  
Dorian muses, as he sits outside Alia’s home.  
A man, simply pretending,  
in the wake of consuming devotion gone cold. 

Dorian breaks his way inside,  
on the third day.  
Alia still not moved from his bed,  
raises tired, bloodshot eyes to him.

Dorian standing in thick dark silk,  
silver piercing and shining from his skin.  
He retreats from the room only to return —  
golden honey in hand.

Dorian kneels, the last remaining  
at the alter.  
To spoon with his own fingers  
into Alia’s mouth, soft lips like petals on his skin.

Dorian sees a God fall,  
into the human who beckoned,  
like a siren,  
from an overhanging balcony.

vii. 

And now the love —  
has turned to hunger.  
Dorian and Alia claw and bite  
and mark and bruise. 

Dorian has seen the human again —  
And he knows that he can bruise.  
Dorian trails fingers down.  
He lines his hands up until they meet the marks he’s left.

Dorian arches over Alia.  
In the muggy room,  
hot breath warms their skin.  
The summer sun rises as Dorian presses down.

Alia strains for breath,  
a smile in his eyes.  
Dorian feels the power that Alia wields,  
as easily as a dagger. 

Dorian feels the rush through his blood,  
so deep and consuming.  
Gold,  
burning through him. 

viii. 

Dorian begins to fear —  
What if everyone can see that bond —  
Burning bright,  
between them a torch. 

Dorian flinches back,  
from every touch.  
Alia’s very presence,  
a dagger to Dorian’s back.

He fades into the shadows of the Circle.  
Where Alia doesn’t think to look.  
Dorian excels in study, rises in regard,  
A reputation begins to build — a foundation where he can stand.

Spring begins to bloom,  
Dorian meets another’s eyes.  
From across the Circle’s halls.  
Until Dorian nearly forgets the burn of a gaze, intoxicating.

Torn between two  
Dorian goes back to the slums,  
warm and familiar,  
where some still smile, and nod their head to him.

He reaches Alia’s door —  
He lingers and he waits,  
knocking and knocking.  
Alia never answers.

Dorian walks back to the circle.  
The breeze at his back.  
And he knows,  
he can never go back.

ix. 

Dorian hears small drips of water echo  
through the room.  
The stones wet. The stones cold.  
He cannot sleep. 

He thinks,  
of the man who calls himself  
Dorian’s Father.  
And how very, very far away he is. 

Dorian thinks of warm Tevinter days.  
Of cold Tevinter nights.  
Of the warmth of his Father.  
Of the coolness of his Mother. 

He thinks of how  
he has lost his family  
from the embrace of a  
lover, not even true. 

From a lover, not Alia,  
Dorian has let his world  
become encapsulated in ice.  
— He’d rather it have burned 

x. 

Dorian will see Alia again.  
He expects a scar, to stretch between them.  
For the language they shared so effortless,  
to have faded and died.

But he does not find it.  
The language still lives —  
but passes only between their eyes.  
The language he has found with Petyr so much more. 

The heat that used to pass between their skin,  
has faded.  
A memory, painful,  
burning in such a different way. 

Dorian closes his eyes —  
he remembers a red Minrathous sun.  
Honey — dripping like gold.  
A smile mixed with a smirk, a promise he had never seen before. 

A promise —  
they had to let fade.

**Author's Note:**

> Alia is an original DA character of mine, who later on becomes the spy master for the Inquisition after Leliana leaves to find the Warden after the event of DA:I. He's a mess and I love him. 
> 
> Alia and Dorian enter into a relationship when they are both very young, Dorian having just come to Minrathous for further study at the Minrathous Circle. They quickly fall into a relationship where not a lot of communications going down cause Dorian's a repressed Altus with a lot of shit going on and Alia's super manic and he's not yet very observed to the feelings of the people he cares about. 
> 
> Dorian begins to equate Alia to a godly figure and only when he sees him in a depressive state does that particular delusion goes away. Dorian revels in the power rush he feels after that delusion dissipates. 
> 
> Basically those two met at the worst possible time for them to meet, but they needed to meet in order for the two to realize the problems they needed to work on. Tragedy is what I live for.


End file.
